Patrick Brontë's year at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

The Telegraph and Argus reveals a bit more about Patrick Brontë's year at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

The Brontë Society this week announced Cottrell Boyce, writer of movies like Goodbye Christopher Robin and 24 Hour Party People, as its creative partner to work with the Haworth museum throughout 2019.
He will join the museum’s new poet-in-residence Zaffar Kunial in celebrating the life of the Rev Patrick Brontë, 200 years after he was invited to take up the role of Perpetual Curate in Haworth.
A society spokesman said: “Despite Patrick Brontë’s life being blighted with tragedy, outliving all six of his children and his wife Maria, during his time in Haworth he was an avid social reformer.
“He relentlessly campaigned for improvements in public health and as a keen advocate of education, he encouraged his children to read widely, draw and write, with their astonishing achievements often overshadowing his own.”
Like Patrick Brontë, Frank Cottrell Boyce is a champion of children’s literacy and reading, speaking openly about his concerns over the way literacy is taught in schools obsessed with targets. [...]
Poet Zaffar Kunial will also be exploring Irish born Patrick’s journey. Born in Birmingham to an English mother and Kashmiri father, the award winning poet will be looking at Brontë family’s heritage, creating new works during his time as Writer in Residence. [...]
They will honour Patrick Brontë’s legacy, exploring the themes of health, education and community, shedding light on the testing times the family faced living in a town where the average life expectancy was only 25 years – the same as some of the unhealthiest districts in London.
The programme, supported by Arts Council England, opens on February 4, with a new exhibition, Patrick Brontë: In Sickness and in Health, running until January 2020.
It explains more about the man who, as a Minister, was expected to know how best to advise and help his parishioners who couldn’t afford medical treatment.
For the first time his medical text books, filled with his own notes, will be collectively on display, giving a fascinating insight into his determination to help the sick, even as he lost his own family.
Alongside his books are a collection of the Brontë family’s spectacles and a handkerchief, believed to have been used by Anne Brontë and spotted with blood from her infected lungs.
Kitty Wright, Executive Director of The Brontë Society said: “Over the last three years, we have been immersed in the bicentenary celebrations of Charlotte, Branwell and Emily Brontë.
“We are already looking forward to marking Anne’s bicentenary in 2020, but in the meantime, had no hesitation in dedicating 2019 to Patrick, two hundred years after he was first invited to take up the curacy of Haworth. His life and work are rich with themes that have a contemporary relevance, including education, social mobility, heritage, social reform and improvements to public health and we look forward to working with Frank and Zaffar to explore some of these issues in the coming year.”
Also included in the programme for the first half of the year are talks, walks, writing workshops and special events including Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee, a new audio experience featuring the poetry of Emily Brontë set to music and performed by The Unthanks. (David Knights)

Fine Books & Collections announces that,

Peter Harrington, the UK’s largest rare bookseller, this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. In 1969 Peter Harrington, the founder of the business, issued the first catalogue from a stall at Chelsea Antiques Market on Kings Road and this year the business which carries his name is launching its 150th catalogue on Tuesday January 22nd. This special anniversary blockbuster catalogue offers fifty notable, and unique, books and manuscripts, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. [...]
Catalogue 150 also contains remarkable books by Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Leo Tolstoy, Karl Marx, Charlotte Brontë, Jeremy Bentham and James Joyce. The 50 unique books selected range in price from £22,500 to £350,000 and come from the fields of travel, economics, philosophy, medicine, poetry, mathematics, computing, as well as literature.

Thrive Global interviews writer Lisa Jones Gentry.

Which literature do you draw inspiration from? Why?[...]  I also love the Brontë sisters with “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre” being two of my favorite books. All of these books allow you to lose yourself in another time and place. I believe that good writing should transport you out of your own space into a place in your mind where you can live the triumphs and tragedies of the characters and for a moment, suspend who you are and parachute into different lives. For me, the essence of good writing is that ability to break the “third wall” of your consciousness and become a part of someone else’s journey. That’s what I aspire to do when I write, whether it’s a screenplay or a novel, I want the reader or the viewer, to become so totally entwined in the experience of my characters that they cry when they cry, they laugh when they laugh, and if they die, the reader experiences a loss so profound it is as if he or she sees their own death, through this character. (Marco Derhy)

The Conversation offers a very complete guide to Wide Sargasso Sea. William's Blog posts about Wuthering Heights.